I had learned from my aunt’s escape that dresses were not convenient to wear when doing nefarious things. I donned one of Raife’s black suede trousers and the shortest, smallest tunic of his I could find, which was still pretty large on me. I was pretty crappy with a bow, but better with a sword, so I strapped that onto my waistbelt and then met the Bow Men lining up by the dozens outside the stables.
When I reached Cahal, he took a long look at my outfit but said nothing.
“How many do we have in all?” I motioned to the Bow Men and Archmere citizens that were being given weapons and conscripted to fight.
“Two hundred fifty,” Cahal said.
Half of what the queen had. I remembered a line from The Nature of War then and it gave me an idea.
Play to your strengths.
“Take fifty of your best Bow Men and hide them in the trees of the Narrow Valley. We can funnel her men in and take out at least a hundred men before they can retreat.”
Cahal grinned. “Yes, my queen.” He turned and started to gather up men and I swallowed hard.
The Nature of War also said, Out of all the things you do to be ready for war, inspiring your army is the most important.
I’d have to give a speech.
With the help of two Bow Men, I stood on the back of my horse and put two fingers in my mouth, letting out a big whistle.
The murmurs stopped, and everyone turned to look at me, causing the nerves to burn in my stomach.
Stay calm. Inspire them.
“Queen Zaphira waited until our king was gone before she attacked!” I snarled. “That tells me that she’s afraid of his leadership. She thinks we are weak without Raife Lightstone. Are you weak?” I asked.
Murmurs.
“Are you WEAK!?” I cried.
Screams responded with a responding no!
“She has no idea what she’s just walked into! No idea the shitstorm we are about to fling her way. I will die bloody on that battlefield before I give one inch of elvin land to that monster!” Spittle flew from my mouth as I bellowed across the entire field.
The men went insane then, screaming and waving their weapons in the air with grimaces.
“Let’s ride!” I called, and then allowed the Bow Men to help me down.
“Shitstorm?” Cahal was back and grinning at me.
I shrugged. “It’s a human expression, I guess. Let’s go be her worst nightmare,” I told him, and he spurred his horse as we rode off to war.
WE ALLOWED the queen to smash through the east wall. Her army trampled a few of the outlying farms, including the one with the yellow barn, but nothing we couldn’t recover from. The most talented of the Bow Men were currently hiding in the trees that flanked the Narrow Valley. The Narrow Valley led to the most populated part of Archmere and the castle. Our civilian volunteers had soaked the dry grasses in alcohol at my request, and now we waited. Part of me couldn’t believe this was happening, and the other part of me was running on instinct.
Remain calm.
I could freak out later. I had a war to win and a people to protect. Raife’s people—my people too. I might be a fake queen in Raife’s eyes but I loved this land, the land of my father, and I would not let it fall to the queen of Nightfall on my watch.
A messenger on horseback rode towards where we were stationed at the end of the Narrow Valley and I braced myself for his report.
“The queen’s army rides this way!” he yelled. “She’s sent some of her army through the Narrow Valley but most around it. She suspects an ambush.”
I nodded. I’d prepared for this. Any smart woman would know that if you went through a valley between two large hills filled with trees, it could be a trap.
“Hold to the plan!” I screamed at our men and began to back up my horse. Going around the valley meant going around the hill, which took more time and was rocky and not an even trail. She’d struggle to get even a hundred men through there in any good length of time.
I rode over to Cahal, who stood ready for my word. “When her men get into the Narrow Valley, light the match and let it burn. Kill anything left moving with arrows.”
He nodded. “You’re going to the open hillside?”
I grinned. “I want to see her retreat with my own eyes.”
Cahal gave me a crooked smile. “It’s an honor to serve under you, my queen. Raife chose well when he married.”
My throat tightened with emotion, more so because my heartbreak was so fresh. Still, his sentiment was genuine, and I thanked him before riding off behind and around the hillside, dismounting my horse to climb up the side of it where my team was waiting with the nets.
Civilians had volunteered to fight for their land in droves when they’d heard I had declined Foxworth’s plan to flee.
I knew the Nightfall queen would suspect a trap at the Narrow Valley and so I’d had the civilians grab whatever rocks and boulders they could and shove them into fishing nets. Now we stood crouched behind bushes and makeshift camouflage as we waited for the queen and her men to cross the path at the base of the large hill. From this vantage point I could already see her army. I’d made it just in time. The past two hours had been the most rigorous and pulse pounding of my life. Mobilizing an army, preparing for war, it was nothing I’d ever experienced and so I was pleased that even though I could see the banner of Nightfall waving in the distance as they neared, we had a plan.
The sheer sight of over four hundred men, dozens of machines, trebuchets, and men flying in the air with mechanical wings, was enough to make terror crawl down my spine.
Another line from The Nature of War came back to me in that moment, and I thanked the Maker I’d read the entire book and committed it to memory, as I did most books I read.
People will die. As a leader, you need to worry about minimalizing the losses and tending to the wounded.
People will die.
People will die.
I looked around at the elvin men and women gathered, most of whom had brought their bow and arrow from home and wore makeshift breastplates made of cooking pans. A sob formed in my throat and I spun so that they wouldn’t see me break down. Putting my face in my hands, I wept softly. Suddenly hands were on mine, ripping them away from my face and drying my eyes. My eyelids snapped open to see Haig standing before me.
When did he get here? He should be hiding in the castle with the rest of the council.
“My queen, the people look to you now for strength,” he reminded me.
I cleared my throat, nodding, and then pulled him down to take cover with me behind the brush. I wiped the remaining tears from my cheeks and spun and faced the task ahead.
“Ready the nets,” I whisper-screamed. The queen’s army was quite far below at the base of the hill, but still I couldn’t lose my element of surprise. She passed the hill, her archers shooting randomly up at it as we all crouched and hid, not firing back.
Shouts of alarm and screams rang out behind us on the other side of the hill, within the Narrow Valley, and I knew the war there had begun. They’d funneled right into our trap and our Bow Men were picking them off before the—
Smoke filled the air and I wrestled with climbing over the ridge to look down and see how the field burning idea had gone. But by the sounds of men screaming and machines exploding, I knew we’d won the Narrow Valley and they were surely retreating from there. Whatever men were left alive that was.
The queen knew too. I saw her then, leading her men. She wore her customary red battle leathers; mechanical wings hung from her back as she rode her black stallion. Strapped to her arms were the usual fire thrower and bolt shooter. She was as powerful as a dragon shifter from Embergate, or as deadly as a Bow Man from Archmere.
In all my planning, I hadn’t thought of the flying men. The mechanical wings were relatively new. I’d seen men testing them around Nightfall City, but seeing six grown men fly towards where we all hid crouched on the hillside now had bile rising in my gut.
We needed the queen and her army to walk deeper past the hillside. But she’d stopped, no doubt seeing the smoke of her burning people and hearing the shouts of alarm. If we shot her men out of the sky she’d know we were here. If she doubled back for her men and then they all came at us, my boulder idea was gone and we were dead.
Press forward. You’re not afraid of anything and you wouldn’t have sent those men into the valley if you hadn’t already prepared to lose them.
The ground they walked on was rocky but for a sandy flat path that hugged the base of the hillside. I watched as indecision warred in her gaze. She looked up to her flyers who were now ten feet from us. No one on the hillside moved. We were covered in leaves, bushes, moss sheets, and anything brown or green we could find. I had a perfect view of the queen’s face from between the cropping of thick bushes I squatted behind. I saw the moment she sealed her fate. A cocky look of superiority washed over her face and her nostrils flared. The scent of burning flesh, of her men dying, filled the air, and then she grimaced.
“Attack!” she screamed.
They charged forward, funneling three by three down the narrow sandy walkway in an attempt to pass the hill and attack my army from behind as they waited in the Narrow Valley. The flyers, distracted with their queen’s orders, veered away from the hill and sped towards the back of the Narrow Valley, where our entire army lay in wait.
Maker be with me.
Once the queen had gotten as far as my last net, I stood and screamed louder than I ever thought possible. “Now!” The bellow ripped from my throat, my voice cracking at the end.
Our civilian army burst into action, letting go of the taut, boulder-filled nets they’d been holding this entire time. At the same time, our Bow Men erupted from bushes and shot at her flyers and any of her archers on the ground.
Giant rocks and boulders tumbled down the hillside and slammed into her army. They knocked men off mounts, they crushed machines, they spooked horses, which ran off wildly without any direction, bucking their riders.
“Reload!” I yelled but it wasn’t necessary, the people were already transferring the second stack of backup boulders behind them into the nets and then releasing them. There weren’t as many but it was enough to cause so much chaos that the queen had lost control of her army. They scattered like a pile of frightened ants.
The queen.
I scanned the ground but could no longer see her. An explosion suddenly rocked the hillside and then I was thrown backwards, my head cracking the hard ground and my teeth snapping together.
Fire. Screaming.
Stay calm. I breathed.
She’d bombed us. One of their trebuchets must have been set up in advance as if she expected an attack. I rose to my feet and a shadow blanketed me from overhead. I looked up just as the queen aimed her bolt shooter at me.
Everything happened so fast then I could barely comprehend it. She flicked her wrist right at me and a bolt left its thrower. Then a blur moved in front of me as Haig threw himself in the path of the shot.
“No!” I screamed. The bolt was fired with such force it went halfway through his chest, knocking him backwards into me before he hit the ground at my feet.
Something wild snapped within my chest and I burst from the ground, leaping over him and into the air. I grasped the ankle of the Nightfall queen and dangled from her leg for a second before she lost balance. She flapped her metal wings wildly as she tried to stay aloft, but they weren’t made to carry the weight of two people.
With a grunt she fell from the sky like a downed bird, hitting butt first and then her back. I wasted no time crawling on top of her, unbridled rage roiling through me.
I didn’t know what I was doing. Driven by pure instinct, I grabbed her cheeks and then hovered my mouth inches from hers. Her eyes went wide and she froze for a second, no doubt thinking I was going to kiss her.
Then I inhaled. My magic ignited, and instead of breathing life into the dying, I took from the living. I sucked her life force right from her mouth. Shocked to see the white mist flowing from her open lips and into my lungs, I was simultaneously freaked out and fascinated by the discovery of this new gift. I watched in awe as a chunk of her hair turned white in the front.
I’m killing her, I thought for a wild second, then something pierced my shoulder blade and agony ripped through my arm, causing me to lose my hold on the queen. She used the distraction to ram a knee into my crotch and shove me off of her.
I lay on my back, arrows flying every which way, and watched in wonder as she took to the skies again. Her wings glinted in the dying sunlight as I grappled with what I’d just done. What I could do.
Maybe I wasn’t blessed, maybe I was also cursed. This gift seemed to be able to go both ways.
“Retreat!” the Nightfall queen bellowed into the sky, and Nightfall’s deep horns blew throughout the valley.
Relief crashed through me at that sound, and I wondered if I’d weakened her. She was flying wobbly, her voice hoarse. Had I taken some of her vitality? Weakened her life?
I pulled my ponytail in front of me and inspected the darker brown chunk. Was there more of it than before? Had the queen just given me more life?
The pain in my shoulder brought me back into the moment and I looked down at my wound, and the arrow sticking out of it, and it was in that moment that I remembered Haig.
Scrambling to get up, I crawled over to the old man. He was lying on his back, bleeding heavily from the stomach as healers tried in vain to save him. This was beyond a simple healer. Maybe if Raife was here, but…
“Step back,” I commanded. I didn’t know how many breaths I had left. Definitely one. Maybe two. Maybe three if taking from the queen added to my life force—I didn’t know how it worked. When I hovered over Haig, opening my lips, his hand clamped over them, gripping my face forcefully and keeping me from breathing over him.
“I’m an old man. I’ve had a good life,” he said weakly. “And dying while watching the Nightfall queen retreat is a death well earned. Don’t take that from me and don’t waste your precious gift on me, child.”
My tears spilled out of my eyes and over his fingers. I wanted to thank him for saving my life, but his fingers were still positioned hard over my mouth like a steel trap. As if reading my mind, he stared at me. “Trading my life for yours was an honor… my queen.”
The tears flowed faster now. He sucked in one large final breath before his eyes went glassy and his chest moved no more. His hand fell away from my mouth and flopped to the ground. It took every ounce of self-control I had not to try to save him. I wanted to honor his wish. A man should be able to choose how he dies.
“My queen!” Cahal screamed and I stood, wiping my eyes. I’d fall to pieces later; my people still needed me.
My shoulder stung like Hades, but I followed his voice and found Cahal climbing to the top of the hillside.
“We have many wounded, and the valley is still on fire, but the troops have retreated,” he said, slightly out of breath.
I nodded, turning to the royal guard that stood behind him. “Heal the wounded! Put out the fires! Send scouts to make sure the entire army leaves,” I yelled and they scrambled. Then I turned to the civilians. “Gather our dead for burial. Burn the Nightfall soldiers.” They too scurried off to do my bidding.
Cahal hadn’t moved. He was staring at my shoulder. “My queen, you need a healer.”
“No. I’m fine. I will be healed after the last man is,” I stated.
The Nature of War had a very poignant line that had stuck with me. On the day of the battle, be the last to eat, the last to rejoice, and the last to be healed if you can help it. This will earn you a respect among your army that you cannot buy with jewels and coins.
I wanted these men’s respect. I wanted their forgiveness. I led them into a battle where some of them had died. Fathers, sons, brothers. I didn’t do that lightly, and although we’d won, the losses would forever stain this day in our memories. I wanted to honor that. The wound wasn’t bad. I could move my fingers, so the tendons were intact, and the bleeding seemed plugged with the arrow so I knew no artery was hit. The pain was manageable.
Cahal put a fist over his chest and bowed before leaving.
I followed him, slowly hiking my way up the hill to peek over the other side. When I saw the carnage I took in a sharp intake of breath, and then coughed as the smoke entered my lungs. The entire valley was filled with dead Nightfall soldiers. They’d been burned, and the ground was black with soot. Farmers and soldiers carried buckets of water to put out the fire at the edges that threatened the trees.
The healing tents we’d erected ahead of time were filled, and there was a small pile of elvin bodies to be taken for burial.
I tried not to count, but I couldn’t help it.
Twelve. Twelve men died because of decisions I made. If Raife were in charge, would it have been less? Would it have been zero? Would he ever forgive me for going to war with his army and killing twelve men?
As I made my way down the valley to check on the healing tent and see if anyone needed help, the first person started to clap. Then another. Chills rose on my arms when I realized they were clapping for me as I passed them. It was a sign that even though I saw the twelve dead bodies as a failure, they were pleased with how everything went and they saw this as a win.
I waved to them as I passed but couldn’t bring myself to smile.
War didn’t deserve a smile, even when you won, because no one really wins in war when even one person dies.
